Doctoral student Tracy Rickman has posed that question and placed it at the center of her thesis. Tracy is a Consumer Research doctoral candidate at Auburn University and her dissertation pertains to wine blogs as an information source.

Participants will be asked to complete a survey that should take about
10-15 minutes.

I encourage everyone to participate in Tracy’s study (participants must be 21 years or older).

In Tracy’s words: “The survey is a little longer than the typical ‘polls’ you see out there. It’s a dissertation and that requires a little more of [the participant’s] time. But, information from this study should provide general benefit to the wine blog community.”

While I tend to be cautious about consumer and market research (which tends to have a master to serve), I am comfortable endorsing Tracy’s project because this is purely an academic project. Tracy – to my knowledge – has no vested interest in publications, blogs or the wine industry. She doesn’t have a blog, she didn’t read blogs prior to starting this thesis and is probably most comfortable describing her wine savvy as “beginner”.

If your wine gets 95 points from one of the major publications, You can buy that new car you’ve been drooling over.

But when it comes to statistics, this number is not so great. Not when you want to get statistically meaningful data from a survey or poll.

Wine Surveys is running a wine serving habits survey. The goal is 200 entries. Right now we have 95. This survey promises to give some very useful insights into people’s wine serving and consumption habits.

The survey will also benefit greatly from novices’ participation. If you are a newcomer to wine or if you have the ability to reach some wine newbies or casual imbibers, please help this survey by giving it some exposure.

We will reciprocate in the results summary if you just contact us and let us know you are promoting the survey.